You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show.

Welcome. The Michael Sherman Show

Welcome to the Michael Sherman Show. I'm your host Michael Sherman. My guest today is Jacob Muschagama and his new book is Free free speech a history from Socrates to social media and as you

could see it's quite the tone there is a long history going all the way

back to the ancient Greeks of politicians and powerful people

trying to silence the speech of critics and anyone else. So most of our

podcast is not about the history of that. We go back to the

anti-slavery movement as far back as we go really well in the founding fathers

too and the Alien and Sedition Act but I don't go back to ancient Greece and

Rome and all that but for that I highly recommend the book it's a great read

it's an incredibly important book on the history of free speech.

Jacob is the founder and executive director of the Danish

Think Tank Yostisia and the host of the podcast Clear and

Present Danger, a history of free speech. the outlets he lives in Copenhagen, Denmark where we recorded this remotely. We mainly

focus on current events, free speech, compelled speech, free expression through music and videos and flag burning, cake baking,

and whatever else you want to do or say and to what extent the government should interfere

with that. We mostly argue that it shouldn't. But of course there are the gray areas in which like incitement to violence could be argued but it

rarely actually happens and the bar is at least in the United States set pretty

high to convict somebody for their speech that maybe

did or did not lead to violence.

We talk about the left and the right, different views on free speech and how both can

be censorious depending on the particular topic.

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